Sor Juana

By Octavio Paz, Margaret Sayers Peden (translator),

Book cover of Sor Juana: Or, the Traps of Faith

Book description

Mexico's leading poet, essayist, and cultural critic writes of a Mexican poet of another time and another world, the world of seventeenth-century New Spain. His subject is Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, the most striking figure in all of Spanish-American colonial literature and one of the great poets of…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Sor Juana as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It’s an all-too-common crime of a history written by societies victors that brilliant women like Sor Juana Ines De La Cruz are doomed after living a life enriching this world’s literature and thought.

It was rage at this kind of historical injustice which inspired my writing of my book

Sor Juana’s great poem "First Dream" also inspired me not only in my first novel, but in many of the visual art I did in my 20’s. We even called my daughter Inés, partially in homage to her.

Octavio Paz’s masterpiece that won him the Nobel Prize of Sor…

From Leopoldo's list on reminding us that the past never dies.

Nobel Laureate Paz reveals the life and world of 17th-century savant and mystic Sor Juana Inès de la Cruz. To escape an arranged marriage, she entered a convent, where she accumulated one of the great libraries in the Americas and, with one of the few telescopes, confirmed Copernicus’ helio-centric worldview, which threatened the hierarchal Christian Church. Although not burned at the stake, like Bruno, she, too, was martyred by being silenced and having her books destroyed, still another terrible punishment.

From Marjorie's list on women's spiritual journeys.

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